Ficher was born in San Francisco, California to a Mexican mother and Portuguese father.  She received a bachelor’s degree from the Women’s University of San Francisco, and, in 1973, a masters’ degree in social work from the University of California.

Ficher was a member of the order of the Sisters of Mercy in San Francisco, and spent six years in the Altiplano of Peru with the order’s mission there.  She always looked back on this as one of the defining experiences of her life.  She left the order in the early 1970s, but was always careful to say, “I left the order, not the church!” She worked as a social worker for Family Services in San Francisco, and later as the director of the program for interpreters at San Francisco General Hospital.

Ficher moved to Mexico in 1980. From 1981 to 1991, she was a counselor at the American School of Guadalajara, where scores of students and parents remember her caring and practical advice, as well as her help with U.S. college admissions.   

Ficher later taught at the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (UNIVA) in Guadalajara, where she did fine work in helping to develop an English program for students of tourism.  While at UNIVA, she also served as an educational consultant for McGraw-Hill of Mexico.

She served as a translator and teacher for staff at the Hyatt Hotel in Guadalajara, and from 1994-2004 was a translator and teacher for executives at Cerveceria Corona in Guadalajara.  In the past few years, Ficher was a valuable member of the English program at ITESO, Guadalajara’s Jesuit university, where she worked primarily with advanced students in international business and management classes.  She was also busy working as a government-certified translator for the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara and for the Tribunal de Justicia de Jalisco, as well as for many area business and residents.

Ficher is remembered by her many friends as a person with a great love of life, of other cultures, of song and dance, and most especially, of Mexico, the true “country of her heart.” Though she had traveled widely in Europe and Latin and South America, as well as in the United States, it was Mexico that claimed her deepest affection.

Ficher leaves no surviving family, but was living at the time of her death with her long-time friend Martha Calderon, whose son Robert and family served as her adopted family.